Building the World's First Bitcoin Car

What we talked about.

In this episode, host Sunny Ray sits down with Will Fan, a serial entrepreneur who runs several companies spanning hardware, diagnostics, and digital assets. Will explains how reading Satoshi Nakamoto's original Bitcoin white paper in 2016 sparked his fascination with peer to peer digital payments, leading him to start mining Ethereum at scale in 2017 and later import mining hardware from China during that country's 2018 mining ban. He traces how a battery diagnostics business taught him to focus on extending electric vehicle life rather than replacing costly batteries, and how frustration with car loan credit checks led him to imagine a vehicle purchased directly with Bitcoin. Will now runs Solo Automotive, one of Canada's few electric car manufacturers, building an ultra efficient single passenger three wheel vehicle inspired by the Corbin Sparrow. He describes his plan to make it the world's first Bitcoin car, accepting Bitcoin payments and eventually recording ownership on chain, while protecting manufacturers from chargeback abuse and pushing broader Bitcoin adoption in the real world asset space.

A serial builder explains how Bitcoin mining, battery diagnostics, and a tiny EV collided into the world's first Bitcoin car.

The questions, and the answers.

What on earth is a Bitcoin car?

It traces back to Satoshi's original white paper. Reading that people could make purchases with a digital currency and change how payments and transactions work blew me away. That sparked my interest in 2016, and by 2017 I started actually implementing it.

You run about five companies. What's the through line that connects them all?

I have always loved hardware, so one side is manufacturing and semiconductors, which I studied as a teenager while also working on cars. I later added SaaS software, e-commerce, and logistics, and now battery diagnostics. It all comes down to hardware, mechanics, batteries, and the chip that makes everything function, like a brain.

What pulled you into Bitcoin in 2017, and what made you stay through the cycles?

I was in Bitcoin mining and we built one of the very first Ethereum miners, hashing on the blockchain. We saw tokens showing up in our wallets and realized this thing actually works, so we started selling the picks and shovels around it. We grew from a small office cluster into a warehouse, then massive facilities and mobile modular mining containers off the grid.

Your network reaches back to the industry's earliest days. How early did you see this space forming?

When I got into it, not many people understood it. China banned mining in 2018, so I started importing miners from Shanghai after operations there shut down, becoming one of the people receiving them in North America. Bitcoin was a referral business, you cannot really market it, you need someone who knows somebody, and that is how most of our capital and customers came in.

What did building a battery diagnostics company teach you about the car industry?

We have tens of millions of electric cars going out of warranty with high mileage, and a lot of my friends ended up paying to replace batteries once warranties expired. I wanted to extend battery life instead of replacing it, so people could keep their cars longer, save money, and maybe pass the vehicle down to their kids.

When did the idea click that a car and Bitcoin belong together?

Buying my first car meant a credit check and financial statements every year, even while running my own business, and that felt unfair to anyone without stable credit or a steady job. Bitcoin is a peer to peer transaction you can hold while its value grows. I got in around two thousand dollars, watched it climb, and realized you could build wealth faster than by saving traditionally.

Why build the world's first Bitcoin car quietly instead of announcing it early?

Both the Bitcoin community and the electric car industry get scrutinized constantly, so launching loudly right away did not feel right, we needed partners and platforms first. Real world asset payments matter because Bitcoin protects manufacturers. As a manufacturer myself, I see wholesalers and retailers losing money to abusive refund policies, and Bitcoin transactions protect both a valid seller and a valid buyer.

Can you talk through the design of the car?

The design came from a partner who modernized the Corbin Sparrow, the little car from Austin Powers, into a teardrop shape with no vents, making it one of the most aerodynamically efficient vehicles on the market. We stripped out empty seats and extra structure to cut weight and cost, since every bit of vacant space in a normal car adds thousands of dollars, and most trips are really just one person running errands.